Business Development Course graduates ten future farmers!

The Spring 2008 Ready to Farm? Business Development Course concluded last Tuesday night with a celebratory supper of local delicacies. Ten future farmers – Alvin, Jason M., Jason H., Miguel, Valeria, Graham, Jake, Cheng, Tim and Jennifer – stuck it out through our intensive, nine-session course on farm business planning, co-facilitated by David Cohlmeyer of Cookstown Greens and our own Training and Resource Coordinator, Sophie Llewelyn. The course guided participants through a process of identifying values, visions, and goals, through developing production, marketing, and financial plans, to building a business plan that new farmers can take to the bank. A series of workshops and farm tours anchored the theoretical stuff of our regular course sessions in the practical day-to-day considerations of planning and running a farm.

Participants graduated from the course with plans to start a hog operation, an organic Asian mushroom farm, an organic vegetable farm and processing operation, a greenhouse and agritourism enterprise, and a small-scale intensive mixed farm and art studio/store. Congratulations to all our of our future farmers!

We’d also like to extend a hearty thanks to the organizations and farms whose collaborative efforts made our course a success: the EFAO OMAFRA, ECOCERT, Farmers Growing Farmers, Greenfields Organic Farm, Smiling Goat Farm, Best Baa Farm, and of course Cookstown Greens.